Word is that President Obama is telling Congress, pass the whole jobs bill. Or nothin’. I hope he sticks to that. See also E.J. Dionne, “Obama Goes Big — and Should Stay Big.”

The headline on Dana Milbank’s column is “The irrelevancy of the Obama presidency.” However, it’s not so much about the Obama presidency as about Congress.

President Obama gave one of the most impassioned speeches of his presidency when he addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. Too bad so many in the audience thought it was a big, fat joke.

“You should pass this jobs plan right away!” Obama exhorted. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) chuckled.

“Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix,” Obama went on. Widespread laughter broke out on the GOP side of the aisle.

“This isn’t political grandstanding,” Obama said. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) guffawed.

There was some unseriousness among the Dems as well. But I would love to see a video that cuts back and forth between the President talking seriously about jobs and the Republicans laughing. See also Steve M.

The New York Times uses graphics to show the real cost of the reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Staggering.

The smirk returns — and the pissant little creep thinks he deserves credit for the death of Osama bin Laden.

Alexander Cockburn looks at a decade of Trutherism. Thank you, Mr. Cockburn.

Paul Krugman generally approves of the President’s jobs proposal, and you know that Krugman is not easy to impress.

I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.

Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition.

My sense of things is that the President offered the boldest plan that he thought he could sell to the American people. Had he not thrown in some twinkle and glitter about deficit reduction it would have been political suicide for him, and the entire proposal would have been buried under scorn and ridicule as soon as it left his lips, no matter if Krugman loved it.

And yes, Republicans in Congress will try to bury it under scorn and ridicule, anyway, but as Nate Silver suggests, the plan as it is could be salable to the American people. And here is something Nate said that progressives who are trashing the plan need to get in their heads — while the American people like to hear about job creation, when they are presented with the choice between deficit cutting and stimulus spending —

In polls that employ the term “spend” or “spending” in describing the additional stimulus, its support drops to an average of 44 percent, with 50 percent saying that deficit reduction is the higher priority

Whether we like it or not, the people have been well conditioned to think that out-of-control government spending is the source of all our ills and must be fixed before anything else can be put right. And UN-conditioning them of that mistaken idea, even if possible, would take years. We don’t have years.

The President, I suspect, realizes as much as anyone that Congress will obstruct this. But if he can sell the plan to a large part of the American electorate and persuade them that the obstructionist Republicans are the ones standing between them and jobs, this will change the political landscape in the upcoming election year.

I am really, really busy and only caught some snips of the jobs speech, but please feel free to discuss. I’ll get up to speed tomorrow.

See the other blog. On the insensitive scale, this is just one step above laughing at little orphan girls selling matches in a snowstorm.

Republican front-runner Rick Perry wowed the crowd last night with his stirring defense of the Texas death penalty.

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I can’t say which is more disgusting … the fact that the audience applauded at the mention of Perry’s record number of executions — 234 — or Perry’s saying he doesn’t struggle over the possibility that some of the condemned might be innocent.

A few days ago I linked to a couple of articles about Texas executions, “Rick Perry set to carry out one or two more questionable executions as candidatee” and “Cameron Todd Willingham Execution: Rick Perry’s Role Deserves Scrutiny.” Summation: There is a high probability that some death row prisoners in Texas are innocent, and Perry not only doesn’t bother to review these cases before the execution, in at least one case he made sure no one else reviewed it, either.

Steve Benen reminds us that while Perry may have a pure faith in the infallibility of the Texas justice system, he has a low opinion of science. Perry is a pure distillation of meanness and ignorance. Yeah, just what we need in a POTUS.

The other part of last night’s debate that people are talking about is Perry’s calling Social Security a “ponzi scheme.” Will talk like that cost him the GOP nomination? One would think so, since the GOP’s voter base skews elderly. However, the “ponzi scheme” talk could work very well with younger voters.

On the third hand — the GOP establishment is not lining up to support Perry. Karl Rove disses him. More telling, perhaps, is Jennifer Rubin’s conclusion that Perry “failed to impress” in last night’s debate. My take on Rubin is that she pretty much reflects GOP beltway insider thinking.

But while the GOP establishment may not have been impressed with Perry, Jonathan Chait thinks Perry won the night with the base.

The media seems to consider Romney the winner. Pardon the condescension, but they’re not thinking like Republican base voters. Romney approaches every question as if he is in an actual debate, trying to provide the most intellectually compelling answer available, within the bounds of political expediency. Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results. His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican id in a way Romney simply cannot match.

The baggers know that reason, like reality, has a well-known liberal bias.

I’ve been busy. If any of you watched and want to vent, or if you want to talk about anything else, go ahead.

Lots of people have been linking to the “Goodbye to All That” essay by Mike Lofgren, which is definitely a must-read. Lofgren, a long-time Republican congressional staffer, explains how the current Republican Party is destroying “democratic process and America’s status as the world’s leading power.”

Now James Fallows provides follow-up comments from a former Democratic staffer. The anonymous staffer seconds what Lofgren wrote, and adds some more. A bit:

I don’t think people realize how fragile democracy really is. The 2012 campaign is currently looking to be the final nail in the coffin unless people start to understand what is going on.

One thing that especially resonated with me about Mike’s piece is the importance of “low information” voters. The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters’ minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

The media likes to call this group “independents,” which implies that they think so long and deeply about issues that they refuse to be constrained by the philosophy of either party. There may be a couple of people out there who fit that definition, but those are not the persuadable voters campaigns are trying to capture. Every campaign is trying to develop its candidate into an easy-to-remember slogan that makes him or her more appealing than the other guy. Actually, because negative campaigning is so effective, they are more often trying to portray the opponent as more objectionable (“I guess I’ll vote for the crook because at least he won’t slash my Medicare”).

Yeah, people are self-absorbed and lazy and take democracy for granted. But it’s also the case that you cannot rely on television or radio to get useful background on candidates and find out what’s really going on in Congress. Fox News aside, I doubt most of the bobbleheads appreciate how badly they serve viewers and listeners, and how little real information manages to trickle through the noise and hype and into the ears of most citizens.

The recent debt ceiling fiasco is a good example. I still doubt that a majority of Americans know what the “debt ceiling” is and what refusing to raise it actually would have meant, and I didn’t see news media explaining it to them.

And demagogues and dictators do love a vacuum.

Jonathan Chait, “What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama.” Pretty much what I’ve been thinking for awhile. It also explains why I think Matt Stoller is a spineless, wimpy, appeasing dupe of the Right.

John Cole:

Chait is pretty much correct. The only thing he does not touch on is the idiotic public option debate, where we all get to relive the joyous occasion of the screamers claiming Obama strangled the public option to death in the crib (JUST ASK JOE LIEBERMAN!) while never once grappling with the fact that there were never 50, much less 60 votes.

See also “EPA Smog Rule Freakout Is Ridiculous.”